Redskins latest roster move lands preseason fan-favorite on 53-man squad

Montae Nicholson has been sent to the IR to end the 2019 season, but the move will bring Ladler onto the active roster for the last week.

The Washington Redskins have sent yet another player to the injured reserve this week ahead of their regular-season finale against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

This time, the move only further depleted the secondary, with safety Montae Nicholson seeing his year come to an end. However, it will bring back a fan favorite from the 2019 preseason for the Redskins in S Kenny Ladler.

Ladler has bounced around the league a little bit since being signed by the Buffalo Bills as an undrafted free agent in 2014. He has spent some time with the Bills, Redskins, and New York Giants. Washington will need Ladler to show some of what he did during the preseason this year, as their secondary is in dire shape after a number of players are either dealing with injuries, or have been sent to the IR.

[vertical-gallery id=27599]

Landon Collins passes idol Sean Taylor for most single-season tackles

Collins surpassed his idol, Sean Taylor, on Sunday for the most single-season tackles with 116 so far this season.

When the Washington Redskins signed all-pro safety Landon Collins in this past year’s free agency, they did so knowing that he would be the most high-profile safety they’d rostered since Sean Taylor, a dynamic player who started his transcendent career with the Redskins in the early 2000s before being tragically murdered in 2007.

Now it just so happens that Collins, who was voted to his fourth NFL Pro Bowl earlier this year, has passed Taylor’s single-season tackling record with the Redskins.

Collins says that he idolized Taylor as a kid, growing up in New Orleans. He modeled his game after the hard-hitting safety, and he followed his legacy by signing a lucrative, $84 million contract with Washington this past offseason. Now, with only 15 games played in his first season in Washington, Collins has already surpassed Taylor’s single-season tackling record, racking up 116 so far in 2019. Taylor’s high-mark was 111 tackles in 2006.

“It’s exciting for me,” Collins said, via Redskin.com. “To beat my favorite player’s record is outstanding and a dream come true.”

With six tackles in Washington’s 41-35 OT loss to the New York Giants on Sunday, Collins became the first safety for the Redskins to have more than 111 tackles in a single season since Taylor did so in 2006.

Though it will be impossible to dethrone Taylor as a cult-figure in Redskins’ lore, Collins is well on his way to being remembered as one of the best defensive backs to play in Washington.

[vertical-gallery id=27599]

Redskins-Cowboys game is among most-televised games this weekend

The Cowboys will be fighting for their playoff lives on Sunday, so it’s no surprise that America will widely be tuned in.

While the Washington Redskins may not be playing for anything on Sunday afternoon, the same can’t be said for their opponent, the Dallas Cowboys.

After losing to the Philadelphia Eagles last weekend, the Cowboys are now in a tough spot if they want to win the NFC East this year and make the playoffs. With a 7-8 record and trailing the Eagles by a game, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys will need to beat the Redskins on Sunday and have the Eagles fall to the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium.

Luckily for the Cowboys, they have had some success against the Redskins as of late, winning eight of the last 10 meetings between the teams. With such a big game for ‘America’s Team,’ it comes as no surprise that the Redskins and Cowboys will be one of the most highly-televised games in the nation on Sunday. Here is a TV Map for you to see if the game will be on in your area.

[vertical-gallery id=27599]

Redskins send Quinton Dunbar and Danny Johnson to injured reserve

The Redskins have signed two more cornerbacks after sending both Quinton Dunbar and Danny Johnson to the IR this week.

It comes as no surprise that the Washington Redskins have added more players to the injured reserve, with cornerbacks Quinton Dunbar and Danny Johnson seeing their seasons come to an end one week short of the finish line.

Dunbar missed this past week’s game against the New York Giants due to injury, and Johnson broke his hand during the game. With a highly banged-up secondary, the Redskins trotted out a trio of young defensive backs to try and shore up the defense, but it didn’t work.

Giants rookie quarterback had a field day, throwing for five touchdowns and well over 300 yards in a 41-35 overtime victory. Now, with Dunbar and Johnson done for the year, the Redskins have signed CB Breon Borders and CB Dee Delaney to the team — two more defensive backs who will likely play ahead of a healthy and well-paid Josh Norman this week.

We’ll see if it works out better this time.

[vertical-gallery id=27515]

Bill Callahan rebukes idea that Redskins coaching job is worst in NFL

Callahan is adamant that the Redskins coaching job is not the worst in the NFL, but of course he’s going to say that.

The statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but Washington Redskins interim head coach Bill Callahan said on Monday that he doesn’t think that the Redskins coaching job is the worst in the NFL.

To be exact, when Callahan was asked about the turmoil surrounding the job on the Redskins Talk Podcast, he said “I don’t respect that statement. This is a prestigious franchise and it deserves the very best.”

To be fair, it needs to be mentioned that Callahan is only the interim coach in Washington, and he expressed on Monday that he would ‘absolutely’ like to stick around as the permanent head coach in the future, as any sane man would. As a prospective candidate, of course, he’s going to call the job he is applying for ‘prestigious.’

“There are only 32 head jobs in the NFL,” Callahan continued. “Yeah, we’ve fallen on some hard times, but who wouldn’t want to take on a challenging situation and turn it around? There’s a lot of reward in that. Our players play hard. Week in and week out, you see the great effort, great intensity, and focus. Who wouldn’t want to be the head coach of an NFL franchise?”

Of course, when you put it that way, being the head coach of the Redskins is a job that many people in the football world would love to have. However, the notion was that the head coach in Washington was the worst job in the NFL, not in the world. Though it is one of 32 jobs in the league, if you want to say that it ranks 32nd in the league, it’s hard to argue.

[vertical-gallery id=27317]

Kirk Cousins falls to 0-9 on Monday Night Football with loss to Packers

Former Redskins’ QB Kirk Cousins lost yet again on Monday Night Football, improving on his terrible primetime record.

Following an overtime defeat that gave the Washington Redskins a 3-12 record on the season, Monday Night Football might have acted as a much-needed reprieve for any fan feeling down in the dumps.

The result — a 23-10 Green Bay Packers victory — didn’t affect the Redskins at all, but it was a classic scene for a former player of theirs. Minnesota Vikings QB Kirk Cousins lost again on Monday night, falling to 0-9 in his career when playing on MNF.

Cousins was particularly awful in this game, completing 16-of-31 passes for 122 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. The loss in primetime only boosted the narrative that Cousins is unable to get the job done on the big stage, as he is now 6-14 when playing in primetime games. Of course, this is nothing that Redskins fans need to be reminded of.

[vertical-gallery id=27515]

Bill Callahan ‘absolutely’ wants to stay on as Redskins head coach

Callahan said that he would absolutely take the official job of head coach if it were offered to him, but there have been no conversations.

With one game left on the regular-season schedule, the Washington Redskins are just days away from officially starting their search for a new head coach.

It just so happens that the Redskins have an interim head coach that has brought a modicum of success to Washington, going 3-7 in his 10 games at the top job. That may be a putrid record to most organizations in the NFL, but it’s pretty impressive in Washington, considering what preceded him.

Callahan said to the media on Monday that he would absolutely take the head coaching job for the Redskins if it was offered to him, and that he was proud of the accountability he believes was brought back into the locker room once he took over the team. Although there has been no conversations with front office decision-makers, Callahan believes he would be a good fit.

[vertical-gallery id=26767]

Dwayne Haskins’ season is over due to ankle injury

The Redskins are holding Haskins out of the final game of the season after he sustained a high-ankle sprain on Sunday.

Washington Redskins head coach Bill Callahan announced on Monday afternoon that rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins would miss the final game of his rookie season due to an ankle injury that he sustained in the Week 16 game against the New York Giants.

It was announced on Monday morning that Haskins suffered a high-ankle sprain, which led to him being carted to the locker room early in the third quarter. Haskins did later walk back onto the sideline and reportedly lobbied to get back into the game.

The Redskins medical staff made the call to keep him out of any further action, and now they will choose to sideline him for the final game of the season, as it poses too much risk for a young and expectedly dynamic quarterback.

Haskins finished his rookie season throwing for seven touchdowns and seven interceptions, to go along with 1,365 yards.

[vertical-gallery id=27515]

Redskins player agrees with Dan Snyder’s involvement in Dwayne Haskins’ injury decision

One Redskins player thinks Snyder was in the right by encouraging Haskins to sit for the rest of the game on a bum ankle.

There are some feelings in the Washington Redskins’ fanbase that team owner Dan Snyder might have overstepped his bounds by encouraging rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins to listen to trainers and sit out for the rest of the game after suffering a high-ankle sprain in the third quarter.

Some people think that Snyder was being too ‘hands-on,’ though the situation was a bit muddled at first after Haskins said post-game that the owner told him not to go back in. A bit later, it was cleared up on social media that Snyder rather encouraged Haskins to listen to the trainers, who were saying the rookie was done for the day.

Regardless of what the fanbase thinks, there are some players in the locker room that don’t think Snyder was out of pocket, and he was well within his rights as owner of the team to try and protect his assets.

“I mean, Haskins is the guy. He’s the guy of the future,” running back Chris Thompson said, via NBC Sports Washington. “So it would make sense to me for [Snyder] to go down and talk to him and tell him to be smart. That’s the biggest thing. He’s a competitive guy, so he’s going to try and go back out there in the game, of course. That’s the smart thing to do right now, in my opinion, is to sit back and chill.”

Thompson later detailed his time sitting next to Haskins on the sideline, where the rookie was lobbying to get back into the game. If we’ve seen anything so far, Haskins is hard-pressed to let anything keep him out of competition, and it takes a lot to keep him away from the action. This time, it took the owner of the team to tell him to be smart, and it was the right decision all around.

[vertical-gallery id=27515]

Dwayne Haskins finishes Sunday with highest QBR in young NFL career

Though he left in the third quarter with a high-ankle sprain, Haskins put on a show in the first half of Sunday’s game.

One of the biggest disappointments from Sunday’s 41-35 OT loss to the New York Giants was that the Washington Redskins had to see a good thing stopped short.

Rookie quarterback Dwayne Haskins was currently putting together by far the best performance he’d had all season, and it had all the makings of being the best game of his young career. In the first half, Haskins went 12-for-15 for 133 yards and two touchdowns, all of which started by the rookie completing his first 11 passes of the game.

Unfortunately, we know what happened next. On the first play of the second half, Haskins was sacked, and he went down with an ankle injury. Though he later walked back onto the sideline after being carted to the locker room, his day would be done, and backup QB Case Keenum was left to try and win the game.

Despite only playing for just over two quarters, Haskins was still the highest-graded player on the Redskins, according to Pro Football Focus.

He finished with a PFF grade of 84.1 and QBR of 143.2, which is by far the highest of his career.

According to a report from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, an MRI confirmed that Haskins suffered a high-ankle sprain, and his status for Week 17’s finale against the Dallas Cowboys is up in the air. It seems like a smart decision to sit the rookie and get him ready for 2020, which after Sunday is starting to look pretty bright.

[vertical-gallery id=27515]